DailyDirt: Making Smarter Animals

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Animals may (or may not) be getting smarter, but there sure is growing evidence that animals have more cognitive abilities than we might have expected. In some cases, we're actually breeding animals for intelligence. (Who wouldn't want to buy a genetically engineered parrot with the conversational capability of a 5 year old kid?) Perhaps we'll end up regretting our animal experiments someday when we're faced with super-intelligent birds or insects, but for now, it's interesting to see just how smart our animal pals can get.

super-intelligent fruit flies???

those flies can count to four, but only to four? not to five? or to three? does that really qualify as counting?

it's a cool experiment. it'll be cooler when they identify exactly what mutation allows the flies to count to four, and see if it exists in other animals? and if it doesn't, then they can try injecting the gene mutation into other insects. I don't really want super-smart cockroaches, but if they can be made, someone will make em. science, bitches.